Tag: Seattle Sounders

It was probably fitting that the Vancouver Whitecaps season should end with a whimper of a 2-0 defeat to the Seattle Sounders in the second leg of the Conference semi-final on Wednesday evening.

After all, Carl Robinson’s whole philosophy is based around making his team as tedious to watch as possible and he achieved the zenith of that ambition over these two games.

Although he must have been disappointed to see a half-hearted Christian Bolaños header count as the only shot on goal over the full 180 minutes when the perfect zero was so nearly on the cards.

What’s left to say?

If you don’t try to win games you won’t win games?

If you don’t think a Cascadian derby playoff series is reason to get your team fired up to score then what is?

Bringing on Davies and Shea who haven’t played ten minutes of good football between them in the last two months displayed typically poor in-game management?

A bizarre end to the season which saw the team lose any rhythm and cohesion due to a constant switching of personnel and tactics?

The belief that relying on “fine lines” is the only way to win games?

The lack of belief in players, constantly speaking of them as underdogs and asking them to play a style of football that sucks the life out of their creativity?

The mind numbing limits to any sense of ambition both on the field and off it?

I could go on, but there will be time enough for that and more over the coming weeks when we can consider whether the “fire Robbo” tweets of this evening are the wounded sighs of unhappy creatures or something containing more substance.

For now though it’s on to a Winter of player moves and speculation, which is always fun in itself I guess.

But how we must all wish we were back in the height of Summer, drinking a cold beer in our Whitecaps themed gazebo and dreaming of what might be.

But “what might be” always turns out to be an illusory stop on the road to “what is”.

But oh for a just a few more shots on goal!

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Marinovic-5.5, Nerwinski-5, de Jong-6*, Waston-5.5, Parker-5.5-Nosa-5.5, Ghazal-6, Techera-4.5, Bolaños-5, Reyna-4, Montero-5 (Harvey-5)

Ha! That will teach all those fair weather fans who thought they’d go to an exciting game of playoff soccer a valuable lesson.

No way they’ll be back again next season and that means shorter lines at the concession stands for the more loyal supporters among us.

Cheers Robbo!

It does sometimes feel as though Carl Robinson has never seen a big game against a Cascadian rival in which he doesn’t want his team to fold up within themselves like an armadillo with anxiety issues and so it proved in the 0-0 tie with the Seattle Sounders at BC Place on Sunday evening.

A different coach may have decided to build on the exciting 5-0 win in midweek and a different coach may have decided to make use of the sellout and lively home crowd to send his team out all guns blazing for the first twenty minutes at least in an attempt to turn the home stadium into a cauldron of passionate fervour.

But Robinson isn’t that kind of coach and so we got the safety first approach we have grown to know and tolerate until it soon became painfully clear that neither team was going to take any real risk going forward at all.

Certainly without Reyna or Mezquida on the field Fredy Montero was back to his splendid isolation, staring in wonder at aimless high balls launched in his vague direction from somewhere in the back four.

Tony Tchani once again looked like a man who could walk into an Apple Store without being noticed and Brek Shea played like somebody who had never seen a football until the first whistle blew.

On two separate occasions he was literally knocked over by the ball. I mean, kudos for the much needed comedy interludes but he’s on a DP salary!

And yet for all that ineptitude a goalless draw may not be that bad a result and maybe Robinson was thinking back to the playoff series against Portland two seasons ago when he played for the same result in Portland but then got burned by the away goal back at BC Place?

One good set-piece, one Seattle error and Vancouver are very much in the box seat on Thursday evening.

But it’s just that sometimes it would be nice to have a coach who wasn’t quite so prosaic, wasn’t quite so afraid of letting his players play and wasn’t quite so entangled in the belief that both him and his team are overcoming insurmountable odds in every game.

A coach who wanted his team to rise to the big occasion every once in a while and not suffocate it under the pillow of a crowded midfield.

Of course we long suffering supporters aren’t the ones who really need the sympathy tonight; that should all be directed toward whoever has to put together the twenty-minute highlight package for that game (or even the four-minute highlight package to be honest).

Spare a thought for their souls.

Time for the Soccer Shorts play ratings.

Marinovic-5.5, Nerwinski-5.5, de Jong-5.5, Waston-5.5, Parker-5.5, Ghazal-5.5*, Tchani-5, Shea-3, Bolaños-5.5, Montero-5.5

So how do we feel about the away goals rule?

Like the penalty shootout it’s one of those quirks of soccer that people often complain about without ever offering up a better alternative.

First introduced in the sixties as a way of mitigating against the difficulty of travel for teams traversing across Europe the influence it has had on games has gradually evolved over the years to the extent that it’s now often the home team who are happy to come away with a scoreless result in the first leg knowing full well that a single goal will carry so much more extra weight in the return.

So a rule designed to persuade visiting teams to attack became a rule that persuaded home teams to defend.

Unintended consequences indeed.

Ironically Major League Soccer is a league in which the away goals rule contains a glimmer of its original purpose given the travel distances involved but equally ironically that doesn’t apply to the upcoming contest between the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Seattle Sounders at all.

So how does Carl Robinson approach the first leg at BC Place on Sunday afternoon?

I suspect that if you offered him a scoreless draw right now he would take it (although he would probably always take a scoreless draw in any game so that point is somewhat moot).

But the chance to go to Seattle knowing that a single goal (say from, oh I don’t know, a set-piece for example?) would force the Sounders to try for two and thus leave them open to the counterattack must be a thought that sets Robinson salivating like a hungry bulldog in a meat pie factory (a word to the wise though, try to avoid buying a meat pie that has been made in a factory if you can no matter what any hungry bulldog may tell you).

And that same thought must be circling around Brian Schmetzer’s brain like a Vlasov-Poisson equation endlessly traverses the brain of a slightly drunk Math teacher.

For the Sounder’s coach knows that if his team can sneak a goal at BC Place their task in the return leg becomes so much easier, but he also knows that searching too hard for that goal could leave his team open to the counter-attack he most fears.

The thing he most desires is the very thing that could ultimately destroy him (much like a hungry bulldog in a meat pie factory funnily enough).

And that’s what the away goals rule does to you.

It deliberately makes some goals more important than others and thus it makes the hope and fear surrounding those goals the prime movers in the way both teams approach a game.

So expect a cagey opening period on Sunday which could then blend into a cagey ninety minutes if no breakthrough is made because the more the clock ticks the more that first goal increases in value.

It probably won’t be pretty to watch but every cross, shot or attempted through ball will contain within it the tension inherent in the knowledge that it has the power to transform the direction of the game completely (that’s true at all times of course but it just seems so much more dramatic in this context for some reason).